Chapter 25

It is the habit of the modern Tusayan Indians to deposit food of various kinds on the graves of their dead. The basins used for that purpose are heaped up with paper-bread, stews, and various delicacies for the breath-body of the deceased. Naturally from its exposed position much of this food is devoured by animals or disappears in other ways. There appears excellent evidence, however, that the mortuary food offerings of the ancient Sikyatkians were deposited with the body and covered with soil and sometimes stones.

The lapse of time since these burials took place has of course caused the destruction of the perishable food substances, which are found to be simple where any sign of their former presence remains. Thin films of interlacing rootlets often formed a delicate network over the whole inner surface of the bowl. Certain of the contents of these basins in the shape of seeds still remain; but these seeds have not germinated, possibly on account of previous high temperatures to which they have been submitted. A considerable quantity of these contents of mortuary bowls were collected and submitted to an expert, the result of whose examination is set forth in the accompanying letter:

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, DIVISION OF BOTONY, _Washington, D. C., March 25, 1896._

DEAR DR FEWKES: Having made a cursory examination of the samples of supposed vegetable material sent by you day before yesterday, collected at Sikyatki, Arizona, in supposed prehistoric burial places, I have the following preliminary report to make:

No. 156247. A green resinous substance. I am unable to say whether or not this is of vegetable origin.

No. 156248. A mass of fibrous material intermixed with sand, the fibers consisting in part of slender roots, in part of the hair of some animal.

No. 156249. This consists of a mixture of seed with a small amount of sand present. The seeds are, in about the relative order of their abundance, (_a_) a leguminous shiny seed of a dirty olive color, possibly of the genus _Parosela_ (usually known as _Dalea_); (_b_) the black seed shells, flat on one side and almost invariably broken, of a plant apparently belonging to the family _Malvaceae_; (_c_) large, flat, nearly black achenia, possibly of a _Coreopsis_, bordered with a narrow-toothed wing; (_d_) the thin lenticular utricles of a _Carex_; (_e_) the minute black, bluntly trihedral seeds of some plant of the family _Polygonaceae_, probably an _Eriogonum_. The majority of these seeds have a coating of fine sand, as if their surface had originally been viscous; (_f_) a dried chrysalis bearing a slight resemblance to a seed.

No. 156250. This bottle contains the same material as No. 156249, except that no larvæ are found, but a large, plump, brownish, lenticular seed 4 mm. in diameter, doubtless the seed of a _Croton_.

No. 156251. A thin fragment of matter consisting of minute roots of plants partially intermixed on one surface with sand.

No. 156252. This consists almost wholly of plant rootlets and contains a very slight amount of sand.

No. 156254. This consists of pieces of rotten wood through which had grown the rootlets of plants. The wood, upon a microscopical examination, is shown to be that of some dicotyledonous tree of a very loose and light texture. The plant rootlets in most cases followed the large ducts that run lengthwise through the pieces of wood and take up the greater part of the space.

No. 156255. The mass contained in this bottle is made up of (_a_) grains, contained in their glumes or husks, of some grass, probably _Oryzopsis membranacea_; (_b_) what appears to be the minute spherical spore cases of some microscopical fungus. The spore cases have a wall with a shiny brown covering, or apparently with this covering worn off and exhibiting an interior white shell. Within this is a very large number of spherical spore-like bodies of a uniform size; (_c_) a few plant rootlets.

No. 156256. The material in this bottle is similar to that in 156255 except that the amount of rootlets is greater, the grass seeds are of a darker color, seemingly somewhat more disorganized, and somewhat more slender in form, and that the spore cases seem to be entirely wanting.

No. 156257. The material in this bottle is similar to that in No. 156249, containing the seeds numbered _a_, _b_, _c_, and _d_ mentioned under that number, besides a greater amount of plant rootlets and some fragments of corncob.

No. 156258. This consists almost entirely of plant rootlets and sand.

No. 156259. This consists chiefly of the leaves of some coniferous tree, either an _Abies_ or a _Pseudotsuga_.

All the seeds with the exception of those of the leguminous plant are dead and their seed-coats rotten. The leguminous seeds are still hard and will be subjected to a germination test.[169]

For a specific and positive identification of these seeds it will be necessary either for a botanist to visit the region from which they came or to have at his disposal a complete collection of the plants of the vicinity. Under such conditions he could by process of exclusion identify the seeds with an amount of labor almost infinitely less than would be required in their identification by other means.

Very sincerely yours,

FREDERICK V. COVILLE, _Botanist._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See "The Prehistoric Culture of Tusayan," _American Anthropologist_, May, 1896. "Two Ruins Recently Discovered in the Red Rock Country, Arizona," ibid., August, 1896. "The Cliff Villages of the Red Rock Country, and the Tusayan Ruins, Sikyatki and Awatobi, Arizona," Smithsonian Report for 1895.]

[Footnote 2: The reader's attention is called to the fact that this report is not intended to cover all the ruins in the section of Arizona through which the expedition passed; it is simply a description of those which were examined, with a brief mention of such others as would aid in a general comprehension of the subject. The ruins on the Little Colorado, near Winslow, Arizona, will be considered in a monograph to follow the present, which will be a report on the field work in 1896. If a series of monographs somewhat of this nature, but more comprehensive, recording explorations during many years in several different sections, were available, we would have sufficient material for a comprehensive treatment of southwestern archeology.]

[Footnote 3: It may be borne in mind that several other clans besides the Patki claim to have lived long ago in the region southward from modern Tusayan. Among these may be mentioned the Patuñ (Squash) and the Tawa (Sun) people who played an important part in the early colonization of Middle Mesa.]

[Footnote 4: Report upon the Indian Tribes, Pacific Railroad Survey, vol. III, pt. iii, p. 14, Washington, 1856. The cavate dwellings of the Rio Verde were first described by Dr E. A. Mearns. Although it has sometimes been supposed that Coronado followed the trail along Verde valley, and then over the Mogollones to Rio Colorado Chiquito, Bandelier has conclusively shown a more easterly route.]

[Footnote 5: See mention of cliff houses in Walnut canyon in the Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.]

[Footnote 6: The kinship of Cliff dwellers and Pueblos was long ago recognized by ethnologists, both from resemblances of skulls, the character of architecture, and archeological objects found in each class of dwellings. It is only in later years, however, that the argument from similar ceremonial paraphernalia has been adduced, owing to an increase of our knowledge of this side of Pueblo life. See Bessels, Bull. U. S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, vol. II, 1876; Hoffman, Report on Chaco Cranium, ibid., 1877, p. 457. Holmes, in 1878, says: "The ancient peoples of the San Juan country were doubtless the ancestors of the present Pueblo tribes of New Mexico and Arizona." See, likewise, Cushing, Nordenskiöld, and later writers regarding the kinship of Cliff villagers and Pueblos.]

[Footnote 7: Report of the Director of the Bureau of American Ethnology for the year ending June 30, 1894; Smithsonian Report, 1894.]

[Footnote 8: The ruins in Chaves Pass, 110 miles south of Oraibi, will be considered in the report of the expedition of 1896, when extensive excavations were made at this point. About midway between the Chaves Pass ruins and those of Beaver creek, in Verde valley, there are other ruins, as at Rattlesnake Tanks, and as a well-marked trail passes by these former habitations and connects the Verde series with those of Chaves Pass, it is possible that early migrations may have followed this course. There is also a trail from Homolobi and the Colorado Chiquito ruins through Chaves Pass into Tonto Basin.]

[Footnote 9: Smithsonian Report, 1883; Report of Major Powell, Director of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 57 et seq. Explorations in the Southwest, ibid., 1886, p. 52 et seq.]

[Footnote 10: Report of an Expedition down the Zuñi and Colorado rivers; Washington, 1853.]

[Footnote 11: Smithsonian Report, 1883, Report of the Director of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 62: "Pending the arrival of goods at Moki, Mr Cushing returned across the country to Zuñi for the purpose of observing more minutely than on former occasions the annual sun ceremonials. En route he discovered two ruins, apparently before unvisited. One of these was the outlying structure of K'n'-i-K'él, called by the Navajos Zïnni-jin'ne and by the Zuñis He'-sho'ta pathl-tâ[)i]e, both, according to Zuñi tradition, belonging to the Thlé-e-tâ-kwe, the name given to the traditional northwestern migration of the Bear, Crane, Frog, Deer, Yellow-wood, and other gentes of the ancestral pueblos."]

[Footnote 12: The reduplicated syllable recalls Hopi methods of forming their plural, but is not characteristic of them, and the word Totonteac has a Hopi sound. The supposed derivation of Tonto from Spanish _tonto_, "fool," is mentioned, elsewhere. The so-called Tonto Apache was probably an intruder, the cause of the desertion of the "basin" by the housebuilders. The question whether Totonteac is the same as Tusayan or Tuchano is yet to be satisfactorily answered. The map makers of the sixteenth century regarded them as different places, and notwithstanding Totonteac was reported to be "a hotte lake" in the middle of the previous century, it held its place on maps into the seventeenth century. It is always on or near a river flowing into the Gulf of California.]

[Footnote 13: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.]

[Footnote 14: Mr Mindeleff's descriptions deal with the same cluster of cavate ruins here described, but are more specially devoted to the more southern section of them, not considering, if I understand him, the northern row here described. I had also made extensive studies of the rooms figured by him previously to the publication of his article, but as my notes on these rooms are anticipated by his excellent memoir I have not considered the rooms described by him, but limited my account to brief mention of a neighboring row of chambers not described in his report.]

[Footnote 15: _Journal of American Ethnology and Archæology_, vol. II, No. 1. All the Tusayan kivas with which I am familiar have this raised spectator's part at one end. The altars are always erected at the opposite end of the room, in which is likewise the hole in the floor called the _sipapû_, symbolic of the traditional opening through which races emerged to the earth's surface from an underworld. Banquettes exist in some Tusayan kivas; in others, however, they are wanting. The raised platform in dwelling rooms is commonly a sleeping place, above which blankets are hung and, in some instances, corn is stored. A small opening in the step often admits light to an otherwise dark granary below the floor. In no instance, however, are there more than one such platform, and that commonly partakes of the nature of another room, although seldom separated from the other chamber by a partition.]

[Footnote 16: Counting from the point of the cliff shown in plate XCI_a_. The positions of the rooms are indicated by the row of entrances.]

[Footnote 17: It was from this region that the individual chambers, described by Mindeleff, were chosen.]

[Footnote 18: Mr Mindeleff, in his valuable memoir, has so completely described the cavate dwellings of the Rio Grande and San Juan regions that their discussion in this account would be superfluous.]

[Footnote 19: See Mindeleff, Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, _American Anthropologist_, April, 1895. The suggestion that cliff outlooks were farming shelters in some instances is doubtless true, but I should hesitate giving this use a predominance over outlooks for security. In times of danger, naturally the agriculturist seeks a high or commanding position for a wide outlook; but to watch his crops he must camp among them.]

[Footnote 20: Ancient Dwellings of the Rio Verde Valley, Dr E. A. Mearns; _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. XXVII. Mindeleff, Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley; Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.]

[Footnote 21: Since the above lines were written Mr C. F. Lummis, who has made many well-known contributions to the ethnology and archeology of the Pueblo area, has published in _Land of Sunshine_ (Los Angeles, 1895), a beautiful photographic illustration and an important description of this unique place.]

[Footnote 22: Miscellaneous Ethnographic Observations on Indians inhabiting Nevada, California, and Arizona, Tenth Annual Report of the Hayden Survey, p. 478; Washington, 1878.]

[Footnote 23: The cliff houses of Bloody Basin I have not examined, but I suspect they are of the same type as the so-called Montezuma Castle, or Casa Montezuma, on the right bank of Beaver creek. The latter is referred to the cliff-house class, but it differs considerably from the ruins of the Red-rocks, on account of the character of the cavern in which it is built (see figure 246).]

[Footnote 24: Fortified hilltops occur in many places in Arizona and are likewise found in the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, where they are known as _trincheras_. They are regarded as places of refuge of former inhabitants of the country, contemporaneous with ancient pueblos and cliff houses.]

[Footnote 25: This pinnacle is visible for miles, and is one of many prominences in the surrounding country. Unfortunately this region is so imperfectly surveyed that only approximations of distances are possible in this account, and the maps known to me are too meager in detail to fairly illustrate the distribution of these buttes.]

[Footnote 26: In certain cavate houses on Oak creek we find these caverns in two tiers, one above the other, and the hill above is capped by a well-preserved building. In one of these we find the entrance to the cavern walled in, with the exception of a T-shape doorway and a small window. This chamber shows a connecting link between the type of true cavate dwellings and that of cliff-houses.]

[Footnote 27: The absence of kivas in the ruins of the Verde has been commented on by Mindeleff, and has likewise been found to be characteristic of the cliff houses on the upper courses of the other tributaries of Gila and Salado rivers. The round kiva appears to be confined to the middle and eastern ruins of the pueblo area, and are very numerous in the ruins of San Juan valley.]

[Footnote 28: See "Tusayan Totemic Signatures," _American Anthropologist_, Washington, January, 1897.]

[Footnote 29: An exhaustive report on the ruins near Winslow, at the Sunset Crossing of the Little Colorado, will later be published. These ruins were the sites of my operations in the summer of 1896, and from them a very large collection of prehistoric objects was taken. The report will consider also the ruins at Chaves Pass, on the trail of migration used by the Hopi in prehistoric times in their visits, for barter and other purposes, to the Gila-Salado watershed.]

[Footnote 30: Possibly the Shoshonean elements in Hopi linguistics are due to the Snake peoples, the early colonists who came from the north, where they may have been in contact with Paiute or other divisions of the Shoshonean stock. The consanguinity of this phratry may have been close to that of the Shoshonean tribes, as that of the Patki was to the Piman, or the Asa to the Tanoan. The present Hopi are a composite people, and it is yet to be demonstrated which stock predominates in them.]

[Footnote 31: A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola; Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1886-87.]

[Footnote 32: This account was copied from a copy made by the eminent scholar, A. F. Bandelier, for the archives of the Hemenway Expedition, now at the Peabody Museum, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.]

[Footnote 33: Hano or "Tewa."]

[Footnote 34: Sichomovi. In the manuscript report by Don José Cortez, who wrote of the northern provinces of Mexico, where he lived in 1799, Sichomovi is mentioned as a nameless village between Tanos (Hano) and Gualpi (Walpi), settled by colonists from the latter pueblo. One of the first references to this village by name was in a report by Indian Agent Calhoun (1850), where it is called Chemovi.]

[Footnote 35: Mishoñinovi.]

[Footnote 36: Shipaulovi.]

[Footnote 37: Shuñopovi.]

[Footnote 38: In 1896 I collected over a hundred beautiful specimens from this cemetery.]

[Footnote 39: There lived in Walpi, years ago, an old woman, who related to a priest, who repeated the story to the writer, that when a little girl she remembered seeing the Payüpki people pass along the valley under Walpi when they returned to the Rio Grande. Her story is quite probable, for the lives of two aged persons could readily bridge the interval between that event and our own time.]

[Footnote 40: "La Mission de N. Sra. de las Dolores de Zandia de Indios Teguas á Moqui."]

[Footnote 41: See J. F. Meline, Two Thousand Miles on Horseback, 1867. Sandia, according to Bancroft, is not mentioned by Menchero in 1744, but Bonilla gave it a population of 400 Indians in 1749. In 1742 two friars visited Tusayan, and, it is said, brought out 441 apostate Tiguas, who were later settled in the old pueblo of Sandia. Considering, then, that Sandia was resettled in 1748, six years after this visit, and that the numbers so closely coincide, we have good evidence that Payüpki, in Tusayan, was abandoned about 1742. It is probable, from known evidence, that this pueblo was built somewhere between 1680 and 1690; so that the whole period of its occupancy was not far from fifty years.]

[Footnote 42: Mindeleff mentions two other sites of Old Walpi--a mound near _Wala_, and one in the plain between Mishoñinovi and Walpi; but neither of these is large, although claimed as former sites of the early clans which later built the town on the terrace of East Mesa below Walpi. I have regarded Küchaptüvela as the ancient Walpi, but have no doubt that the Hopi emigrants had several temporary dwellings before they settled there.]

[Footnote 43: Sometimes called Nüsaki, a corruption of "Missa ki," Mass House, Mission. One of the beams of the old mission at Nüsaki or Kisakobi is in the roof of Pauwatiwa's house in the highest range of rooms of Walpi. This beam is nicely squared, and bears marks indicative of carving. There are also large planks in one of the kivas which were also probably from the church building, although no one has stated that they are. Pauwatiwa, however, declares that a legend has been handed down in his family that the above-mentioned rafter came from the mission.]

[Footnote 44: Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, January 2, 1895, p. 441.]

[Footnote 45: Thus in Castañeda's account we are told: "Farther off [near Cia?] was another large village where we found in the courtyards a great number of stone balls of the size of a leather bag, containing one arroba. They seem to have been cast with the aid of machines, and to have been employed in the destruction of the village." It is needless for me to say that I find no knowledge of such a machine in Tusayan!]

[Footnote 46: The ceremonials attending to burial of the eagle, whose plumes are used in secret rites, have never been described, and nothing is known of the rites about the Eagle shrine at Tukinobi.]

[Footnote 47: Recent Archeologic Find in Arizona, _American Anthropologist_, Washington, July, 1893.]

[Footnote 48: For a previous description see the Preliminary Account, Smithsonian Report for 1895; also "Awatobi: An Archeological Verification of a Tusayan Legend," _American Anthropologist_, Washington, October, 1893.]

[Footnote 49: This important ceremony celebrates the departure from the pueblos of ancestral gods called _katcinas_, and is one of the most popular in the ritual.]

[Footnote 50: Pacheco-Cardenas, Colleccion de Documentos Inéditos, XV, 122, 182.]

[Footnote 51: Voyages, III, pp. 463, 470, 1600; reprint 1810.]

[Footnote 52: Pacheco-Cardenas, Documentos Inéditos, op. cit., XVI, 139.]

[Footnote 53: Menologio Franciscano, 275; Teatro Mexicano, III, 321.]

[Footnote 54: San Bernardino de Ahuatobi (Vetancurt, 1680); San Bernardo de Aguatuvi (Vargas, 1692). I find that the mission at Walpi was also mentioned by Vargas as dedicated to San Bernardino. The church at Oraibi was San Francisco de Oraybe and San Miguel. The mission at Shuñopovi was called San Bartolomé, San Bernardo, and San Bernabe.]

[Footnote 55: This article was in type too early for a review of Dellenbaugh's identification of Cibola with a more southeasterly locality. His arguments bear some plausibility, but they are by no means decisive.]

[Footnote 56: An exact translation by Winship of the copy of Castañeda in the Lenox Library was published in the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau.]

[Footnote 57: "At evening the chiefs asked that notices be written for them warning all white people to keep away from the mesa tomorrow, and these were set up by the night patrols in cleft wands on all the principal trails. At daybreak on the following morning the principal trails leading from the four cardinal points were 'closed' by sprinkling meal across them and laying on each a whitened elk horn. Anawita told the observer that in former times if any reckless person had the temerity to venture within this proscribed limit the Kwakwantû inevitably put him to death by decapitation and dismemberment." ("Naacnaiya," _Journal of American Folk-lore_, vol. v, p. 201.) This appears to be the same way in which the Awatobians "closed" the trail to Tobar.]

[Footnote 58: When the Flute people approach Walpi, as is biennially dramatized at the present time, "an assemblage of people there (at the entrance to the village) meet them, and just back of a line of meal drawn across the trail stood Winuta and Hoñyi," also two girls and a boy. After these Flute people are challenged and sing their songs the trail is opened, viz: "Alosaka drew the end of his _moñkohu_ along the line of meal, and Winuta rubbed off the remainder from the trail with his foot." "Walpi Flute Observance," _Journal of American Folk-lore_, vol. VII, p. 19.]

[Footnote 59: This custom of sprinkling the trail with sacred meal is one of the most common in the Tusayan ritual. The gods approach and leave the pueblos along such lines, and no doubt the Awatobians regarded the horses of Espejo as supernatural beings and threw meal on the trail before them with the same thought in mind that they now sprinkle the trails with meal in all the great ceremonials in which personators of the gods approach the villages.]